Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MICHAELH. LoNG
University of Hawai,i at Manoa
oiven adequate opportunities, older children, adorescents, and adults can and do ream
much ofan
L2 grammar incidenurry, whilc focusing on mcaning, or communicarion. Research shows,
however,
rhar a locus on meuu,g alonc (a) is insuflicienr to achieve full native-rike compctence,
and (b) can be
improved upon, in terms of both mte and urtimatc attainment, by periodic anention to language
as
object. ln crassroom senings, this is best achieved not by a retum to discrete-point grammar
teaching,
or what I call/bcus on fbrns, where cruses sgrnd most of their time working on isolared linguisric
structures in a sequence predetermined extematty by a syllabus designer or texlbook writer. Rather.
during an otherwise meaning-focused lesson, and using a variety ofpedagogic procedures, learnen,
attention is briefly shifted to linguistic code features, in conlext, when studens experience problems
as
they work on communicative task, i.e., in a sequence detcrmincd by their own internal syllabuses,
current processing capacity, and leamability constraints. This is what I calllocus onform.Focus on
form is one ofseveral methodological principles in Task-Based Language Teaching.
object, including grammar, but within an otherwise communicative classroom, and (c)
illustrate the role focus on form plays in one kind of communicative program: Task-
Based Language Teaching.
IJniversity of Hawai'i Workint Papers tu ESI, Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring 1998, t'p. 35a9.
36 LONG
Option It Focus on
lorms
optionlistodayconsideredthetaditionalapproach,althoughithasnotalwaysbeen
The teacher or
viewed that way. Coursc desigr starts with tlrc language to b€ taught'
(rhonemes, words,
textbook writer divides thc L2 into scgmcnts of various kinds
and
collocations, morphemes, s€ntence pattems, notions, functions' tones' strcss
inronation patterns, and so on), and presents these to the leamer in nodels, initially
one
Method, TPR, etc.), and by the synthetic classroom devices and practices commonly
associated with them (e.g., explicit gramm.u rules, repetition of models,
memorization of
short dialogs, linguistically "simplified" texts, transformation exercises, explicit
negative
feedback, i.e., so-called "error correction", and display questions). Together, they
result in
lessons with what I call a focus on forms. Focus on forms lessons tend to be rather
dry,
consisting principally of work on the linguistic items, which students are expected to
master one at a time, often to native speaker levels, with anything less treated as .,error.,'
and little if any communicative L2 use.
Focus on forms suffers from at least six major problems:
I . There is no needs analysis to identi! a particular learner's or group of leamers,
communicative needs, and no means analysis to ascertain their learning styles and
preferences. It is a one-size-fits-atl approach. This usually results in teaching too
much-some language, skills, and genres leamers do not need-and too little-nor
covering language, skills, and genres they do need. This is discouraging ro students
and ineffrcient.
2. l,inguistic grading, both lexical and grammatical, tends to result in pedagogic
materials of the basal reader variety-"See Spot run! Run, spot, run!"-and textbook
dialogs and classroom language use which are arti{icial and stilted-"Hello, Mary.
Hello, John. Are you a student? Yes, I'm a student. What are you doing? I'm reading
a book, etc."----captured nicely
in David Nunan's example of simplified
Shakespeare-"Stab, Hamlet, stab!", and in classroom input that is functionally
restricted and "impoverished" in various ways. In other words, a focus on forms often
leads to what Widdowson (1972) called language sag'e, not to realistic models of
language use. "Simplification" is also self-defeating in that it srlcceeds in improving
comprehension by removing from the input the new items learners need to encounter
for the purposes of acquisition. (lnprut elaboration can usually achieve comparable
comprehension gains without this disadvantage and without bleeding a text
semantically. See, e.g., Long & Ross, 1993.)
3. Focus on forms ignores language leaming processes altogethel or else tacitly assumes
a long discredited behaviorist model. Of the scorcs ofdetailed studies of naturalistic,
classroom, and mixed L2 leaming reported over the past 30 yehrs, none suggests
anything but an accidental resemblance between the way leamers acquire an L2 and
the way a focus on forms assumes they do, e.g., between the order in which they learn
L2 forms and the sequence in which those forms appear in extbmally imposed
linguistic syllabuses. Synthetic syllabuses ignore rcsearch findings such as those
showing that leaming new words or rules is rarely, if ever, a dne-time, categorical
38 LONG
prematurestabilizationhavebeenreportedinstudiesofadultleamerswithprolonged
others'
nut*"I .*po.*. by Pavesi (1986), Schmidt (1983)' and
4.white(lgglandelsewhere)haspointedoutthatsomeLl-L2contrasts'suchasthe
$ammaticalityofadverb-placementbetweenverbanddirectobjectin(Ll)French'
quickly the door), appear to bc
Lut it, urrgrur-aticality in (L2) English (*He closed
unleamable from positive evidence alone, i.e.,
simply from exposure to the input'
EnglishspeakersshouldhavenotroublelearningthatinadditiontoJeboisducafe
rcus les iours (l drink coffee every day), it is possible
to say Je bois touiours du cafe
It should be easy
(+l drink every day coffee), which is ungrammatical in English'
because the leamers will hear plenty of examples
of each structure in the French L2
input'i.e.,positiveevidence.Thereverseisnottrue,however'Frenchspeakerstrying
tolearnEnglishinanoption2classroomwillbefacedwiththetaskofnoticingthe
the deviant
absence of the altemative French construction in the input' Worse'
breakdown'
structue (tHe opened carefully the door) causes no communication
makingitlikelythatleamerswillremainunawareoftheirenor.Positiveevidence
alone may suffice to show the leamer what is grammatical'
but not what is
ungrammatical
5.Apurefocusonmeaningisinefficient.studiesshowrateadvantagesforleamerswho
R. Ellis' 1994;
receive instruction with attention to code features (for review' see
L2 input is
Long, 1983. 1988). As I have argued for many years' comprehensible
necessary, but not sufficient.
how new items are organized into a linguistic system, and which may not
occu rmtil
much later, and certainly not necessarily with metalinguistic awareness). In other
words
to deal with the rimitations of a pure lbcus on rneaning, systematic provision
is made in
option 3 for attention to language asobject. unlike in option l, however. which forms
are targeted, and when, is determined by the leamer's developing language
system, not by
a predetermined extemal linguistic description. Focus on form, therefore.
is leamer-
centered in a radical, psycholinguistic sense: it respects the leamer's internal
syllabus. It
is under leamer control: it occurs just when he or she has a communication problem,
and
so islikely already at least partially to understand the meaning or frrnction ofthe new
form, and when he or she is attending to the input. These are conditions most would
consider optimal for learning-the psycholinguistic equivalent of worker control of the
means ofproduction.
Focus on form should not be contused with 'form-focused instruction.' The latter is
an umbrella term widely used to refer to any pedagogical technique, proactive or reactive,
implicit or explicit, used to draw students' attention to language form. It includes focus
on form procedures, but also all the activities used for focus on forms, such as exercises
written specifically to teach a grammatical structure and used proactively, i.e., at
moments the teacher, not the leamer, has decided will be appropriate for learning rhe new
item. Focus on form refers only to those form-focused activities that arise during, and
embedded in, meaning-based lessons; they are not scheduted in advance, as is the case
with focus on forms, but occur incidentally as a function of the interaction of leamers
with the subject matter or tasks that constitute the leamers' and their teacher's
predominant focus. The underlying psychology and implicit theories ofSLA are quite
different, in other words. Doughty and Williams capture the relationships among all three
approaches verywell in their forthcoming book (Doughty and Williams, in press-a):
We would like to stress that focus on formS and focus on form are not polar
opposites in the way that'form' and 'meaning' have often been considercd to
be. Rather, a focus on form entails a focus on formal elements of language,
whereas focus on formS is limited to such a focus, and focus on meaning
excludes it. Most important, it should be kept in mind that the fundamental
assumption of focus-on-form instruction is that meaning and use must already
be evident to the leamer at the time that attention is drawn to the linguistic
apparatus needed to get the meaning across. (Doughty and Williams, in press-b.
p.4)
42 LONG
T as k- B as ed Language Teaching
point' so let us see how this would
Some examples would probably be useful at this
workinaparticularkindofcommunicativeclassroom,oneimplemurtingTask.Based
LanguageTeaching(TBLT).Therearescverallinesof..task-based,'workintheapplied
textbook materials. Most
Iinguistics literature, and a flurry of commercially published
as carriers of
really involve linle more than the usc of 'tasks' in place of 'exercises'
be designsted 'task-
either an overt or a covert grammatical syllabus; they slrould not
based, at all, therefore, since they are grammatically based,
not task-based. The task-
basedapproachreferredtohercdealswithgrammar,butwithoutrecoursetoafixed
focus on form'
$ammatical syllabus, through
As described more fully elsewhere (see, e'g', lnng, 1985' 1997' to appear;
Inng &
linguistic
crookes, 1992), recognizing the psycholinguistic problems with synthetic
and employ a non-
syllabuses, the syllabus and methodology for TBLT ue analyic,
and implementing
linguistic unit of analysis, the tast, st each of seven steps in desigring
a TBLT program (see Figurc 2). It is steps I to 5 which conccm
us here with respect to
report, and so on. Four of many tsrget tasks for a tourist, for example, might be to
make or change a hotel, plane, restaurant or thcater rcservation'
3. Derivc pglsgsgig55b.
4. Sequcocc to form a task-bascd wllabus.
Classi0 the target tasks into target task types, e.g., making/changing reservations.
This temporary shift to a more abstract, superordinate category during syllabus design
is made for several reasons, including the tiequent lack ofsufhcient time to cover all
the target tasks identified in the needs analysis separately in a course, and as one way
ofcoping with heterogeneou groups ofstudents with diverse needs (for an example
and details, see Long, 1985).
3. From the target task types, deive pedagogic tasks. Adjusted to such lactors as the
leamers'age and proficiency level, these are series of initially simple, progressively
more complex approximations to the target tasks. Pedagogic tasks are the materials
and activities teachers and students actually work on in the classroom. A false
beginners class ofyoung adult prospective tourists, for instance, might stan with the
following sequence: (a) intensive listening practice, during which the task is to
identi[ which of40 telephone requests for reservations can be mel, and which not, by
looking at four charts showing the availability, dates and cost ofhotel rooms, theater
and plane seats, and tables at a restauant; (b) role-playing the parts ofcustomers and
airline reservation clerks in situations in which the airline seats required are available;
and (c) role-playing situations in which, due to unavailability, learners must choose
among progressively more complicated altematives (seats in different sections of the
plane, at different prices, on different flights or dates, via different routes, etc.).
4. Sequence the pedagogic tasks to form a rasl<-b ased syllabus. As is the case with units
in all synthetic and analytic syllabus types, sequencing pedagogic tasks is largely done
intuitively at present. The search is on, however, for objective, user-friendly criteria
and parameters of task complexity and difficulty, and some progess has been made
(see, e.g., Robinson, to appear; Robinson, Ting, & Erwin, 1995).
5. Implement the syllabus with appropriate methodologl artd pedagogt. The way I
conceive TBLT (and LT in general), there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn
between potentially universal methodological principles, preferably well motivated by
research findings in SLA and cognitive science, and desirably parlicular pedagogical
procedures that realize the principles at the local level, choice among the laner being
determined by such factors as teacher philosophy and preference, and leamer age and
literacy level. 'Provide negative feedback' is an example ofa methodological
principle in TBLT (and most other approaches and "methods" in language teaching);
whether it is delivered in a particular cli$sroom thrrough use of an explicit rule
statement, in oral, manual, or wriften mode, explicitly via some form of overt "enor
correction" or implicitly, e.g., via unobtrusive recasts of leamer utterances (see, e.g.
Doughty and Varela, in press; Ortega and Long, in press), and so on, are local
LONG
required. one way focus on form might be achieved is through corrective feedback
built into the materials themselves, e.g., through the output of task (iii) being rejected
as input for task(iv) in a travel simulation, thereby alerting students to the existence
and/or identity of enor. Altematively, the teacher might briefly intem.rpt the group
work to draw students' attention to the problems, perhaps by modeling one member
of a pair of forms and asking the class if it is good or bad, perhaps by explaining the
difference between the pairs oftarget forms, or perhaps simply by pointing to the
words on the board. As always in TBLT, the methodological principle is the
important thing; the optimal pedagogy for implementing that principle will vary
according to local conditions, as assessed by the classroom teacher. He or she is the
expert on the local classroom situation, after atl, not someone writing about language
teaching thousands of miles away in an office in Honolulu or a commercial materials
writer sipping martinis on a beach in the Bahamas.
empirical studies documenting thc efficacy of focus on form with children and adults in a
variety of classroom settings.
+-)Obnuivc
UnobEudvc
FocuconFoln Focus on Form
Inputflood X
Task-csscntial languagc X
InpI .lhrnccmcot x
Ncgotiation x
Rccast x
Output cohanceoot x
lntcraction cohanccmcnt x
Dictogloss x
CRtasks x
Input proccssing x
Garden path x
Figure 3. Degrce of obtrusivends of focus on form (from Dough$ & Williams, in press
c)
One chaptcr in the book, written by thc editors thcmsclves (Dbughty and Williams' in
press-c), focuses on the six decisions and options for t€achcrs and materials desigrers in
this area: (a) whether or not to focus on form, (b) rcactive versuq proactive focus on form,
(c) choice of linguistic form, (d) cxplicitness of focus on fomr, 1|) seQuential versus
integrated focus on form, and (f) the role of focus on form in thd curriculum. In
meticulous detail, Doughty and Williams revicw the options avrilable to teachers at each
juncture, and what the research conducted at Georgctown, Hawhi'i' Urbana-Champaign'
LONG
researchers alike, this work by Ellis, Spada, Nonis and Ortega, and Doughty and
granrmar in TBLT
williams, offers the basis for a serious research program on the role of
and other forms of communicative language teaching
for the next decade'
FOCUS ON FORM IN TASK.BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING 47
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*lli'::t**::1ru:::i;:;.,"gicarchoicesinrocusonrormrnc
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A s'ludv'
**r'-rx]:*i fi;[:""'lhe
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F'OCUS ON FORM IN TASK.BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING 49
Michael H. Long
Department of ESL
1890 East-West Road
Honolulu, Hawai' i 96822
e-mail: mlong@hawaii.edu